Business
Planning Your Brilliant PDF Freebie
Freebies, Big Bananas, Pink Spoons…Got Yours?
Having a freebie, something awesome your website visitors can download or use for free, in exchange for signing up for your newsletter list, is key to growing your opt-in list and online business. If you don’t have one it’s time to get busy and get this done!
In interest of full disclosure, I’ll tell you that it took me f-o-r-e-v-e-r to finally get a downloadable freebie up on my site. Why? I’m so busy making big bananas for other lovely ladies that it is hard to find time to do my own stuff AND I was procrastinating like crazy.
Since I put my freebie up (see it over there on the right?) my list has grown 34 percent! So…do it!
Your freebie (also called a big banana or pink spoon) can take many forms: discount coupons, videos, audio lessons, courses, e-books, worksheets, downloadable PDFs, etc. Today we’ll be talking about PDF freebies.
Before you dive right in to creating your PDF freebie, stop for a few minutes and take a big picture view of the project. Doing this ground work that will set the foundation for creating a beautiful and useful PDF that will get downloaded and used (not downloaded and forgotten)!
The questions below will help you do this. They cover four key areas: audience, content, design/branding, and marketing.
Here we go. Grab a notebook and jot down your answers.
Audience
1. Who is this PDF for?
Picture someone reading your PDF and smiling and nodding and taking notes. Who is it?
2. How can you make this just for them?
What questions do they have that you can answer?
3. What step will they be able to take after reading your freebie? What will it help them do?
Why are they reading your PDF? What do they want to know, learn, or become from reading?
4. How do you want them to feel when they see/read your PDF?
Inspired, empowered, curious, entertained?
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Content
1. What is the topic of your pdf?
What are you going to write about my dear? Start with what your audience needs to know in order to hire you or buy your product.
2. What do you have to say about this topic that no one else does?
Now’s the time to differentiate yourself from everyone else. Say something new. Say something YOU.
3. What format is the content going to take?
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Tips
Manifesto
Checklist
How To
Look Book
Product/Service Comparison
Process Explanantion
411 – Industry Jargon Explained
Workbook
E-book
4. Where is the content coming from?
Is this new content, a blog post you are expanding, old content that you are converting to a new format?
5. What ancillary info can you include to add more value to your content?
Will it include links to extra materials (videos/mp3/blog posts on your website)? Bonus resources/tips?
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Design/Branding
1. How do you want this freebie to look?
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Heavily designed or basic?
Bold or understated?
Fun or serious?
Will it include photos or illustrations?
Will it include charts?
2. How are you going to maintain your current branding in the design?
What colors, fonts, and design elements from your website and other branding can you use to keep the look consistent?
3. How does this PDF fit into your business mission/goals?
Is it helping you expand into new areas, reinforcing your expertise in your niche?
4.
How does it fit in with the rest of your content/marketing materials.
Does this lead into a product or service you have? Is it an introductory piece for people who are new to your brand or something meatier for your loyal fans?
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Marketing
1. Why do you want to create this freebie?
Why you, why now? What makes this the right time to be creating this?
2. What results do you want?
Do you want more signups for your list, do you want to drive traffic to a sales page, etc?
3. How can you measure the results?
What’s your subscriber count now? Twitter followers, FaceBook fans? How are you going to keep track of the results this PDF brings?
4. What will success look like?
What increase/changes would make you ecstatic?
5. How can you take this up a notch and really make it a one-of-a-kind pdf that only you could create?
What skills, talents, background, unique perspective on the topic do you bring to the table?
6. How is this pdf going to be presented to your audience?
Opt-in, free, only to your list as premium content, as part of a product launch, as an add-on to an existing program/service, as a bonus for someone else program?
7. What kind of promo activities are you going to do to make sure your audience knows this resource is available to them?
Blog posts, guest posts, Tweets, status updates. Make a plan now to get this out in the world!
Woo! That’s a lot of questions!
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As you are writing, designing, producing your freebie your answers to these will help you keep the freebie focused and on track.
Come back to these answers if you get stuck while writing. Read through your first draft with these answers in mind. Use your answers as a checklist to align the intentions you have for the freebie with the final result.
You can use these planning questions to help you plan freebies in other formats, too.
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Want to learn how to write, design, produce your own PDF freebie?
Come learn how to write, design and promote an opt-in that’s perfect for your clients during Opt-in Brilliance. The next live session of the workshop starts September 23.
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Have an a-ha! moment while reading this post? Tell me about it in the comments.
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Wishing and Sweeter Sweet Spots: Building Businesses That Support Our Dreams
I’m taking an online class called The Wishing Experience with Andrea Lewicki. One of our first assignments was to spend five minutes writing down all of the wishes we’d like a genie to grant us. Sort of like an extended birthday cake wishing session.
Looking at my wishing list was a bittersweet experience.
Because The Wishing Experience is about being curious about ourselves I started thinking about the “why” behind my bittersweet feeling. Why, when all that I’d wished for is well within my grasp, did my wishing list make me both happy and sad?
When I was little and wished out loud for something my Dad would say: “Wish in one hand and sh*t in the other and see which fills up first.”
Which I’m realizing now I carved into my brain as the limiting belief that “wishes are stupid.” But now what I really think Dad was getting at is that wishes require action to have a chance of coming true. Wishes grow and flourish and live in the sweet spots that we create for them.
Crafting Sweeter Sweet Spots
We all started our businesses for our own reasons. Money is a primary motivator, of course, but there’s so much more to it than that.
We have skills. Skills that can help other people. When our skills meet up with another’s pain or wants there’s a special connection, a sweet spot where skills and money are happily exchanged.
But beyond that, beyond the “why we do what we do for our clients and customers” … for many of us there are deeper, precious, personal reasons why we started our own businesses.
In the rush to build our businesses and learn social media and launch products it is easy to forget what we were wishing for from our entrepreneurial journey in the first place. It’s easy to lose track of our own dreams.
These dreams are so important to our life and to creating a business that serves us. When we can choose to align our dreams with what we do well and someone else’s dreams we can create an even sweeter sweet spot.
To get to that sweet spot we have to keep reminding ourselves of those deeper personal reasons behind launching our own businesses.
I started my own business to share my skills with the world (I help women build beautiful online businesses). Because there is a need for my set of skills there’s a really sweet spot where I can do what I love and help other women build their dream businesses and get paid well to do so.
There’s also a place where I get to do what I love and get paid well AND have a business that supports my bigger life goals. For me this means building a business that honors the level of flexibility I need. A flexible workload and consistent income stream so I can manage a chronic illness, have time to devote to writing fiction and be able to spend quality time with my parents, children and hubby.
After my wishing session I felt bittersweet because I realized I’ve been spending a lot of time circling around this sweeter sweet spot. I keep telling myself that the sweeter sweet spot isn’t always possible, that I should be happy when two of the three requirements align. That flexibility isn’t that important.
In fact, I told myself that some of my deeper wishes are downright selfish.
How selfish is it to think we could take our kids and travel around the world? How selfish is it to want to write fiction every day? What will the neighbors think? What will my parents think?
We hold up the dreamers, the doers, we applaud their adventurous lives, but we don’t allow ourselves to move into that sweeter sweet spot for ourselves. We stand in our own way. We don’t believe in the magic of a wish or in our ability to look at those bigger life goals and make choices that pull us into alignment.
In retrospect we can always see where we could do better. I’m the person who chose to spend 10 more minutes on Facebook instead of 10 minutes writing fiction. I decided to watch another webinar while snacking at my desk instead of stopping to take a walk and enjoy my lunch.
When I’m making those kinds of choices, which take me farther away from where I really want to be, I’m ignoring those deeper reasons why I went into business in the first place.
When we don’t honor our whys we find ourselves veering off track and wishing, wishing, wishing for a genie to make it all better, when the power is right there with us.
So what can we do to keep ourselves on track? I made myself a little cheat sheet that I keep by my computer. It’s a list of those deeper wishes, those deeper personal whys behind my entrepreneurial journey. When it comes time to decide if I’ll take on another project or spend another 10 minutes on Facebook, I’m training myself to stop, look at my list and see if what I’m contemplating matches with where I want to go.
I know I’m going to continue to make decisions that sometimes leave me feeling bittersweet. I’m human. I know that I’ll keep circling around that sweeter sweet spot. But I also know that many times I’ll be living right there, I just have to stop and smell the roses.
What are you wishing for in your life?
Do you want to be working from a cafe in Paris this time next year? Do you want to spend afternoons hanging with your kids at the park? Do you want an art studio in your basement so you can sneak down and paint in every free moment? Do you want to buy a yacht and head out on a round the world adventure?
How can you use that big picture view of your future to empower your decision making process today? What action can you take? How can you make decisions that move you toward living in the sweeter sweet spot with your business and life?
Mad Libs and Magazines: Inspiration for Blog Posts
As you are building your online business you’ll produce an amazing amount of content: blog posts, Tweets, Facebook status updates, ebooks, video scripts, program materials, sales copy, the list goes on and on.
Here’s a trick for coming up with blog post topics for your editorial calendar.
You can also try this tactic when inspiration isn’t striking and you need a quick blog post topic.
Content Strategy Tip: Pick up a stack of magazines and use their cover lines to create fill-in-the-blank formulas, like Mad Libs, to spark post ideas.
Here are a few examples to get you started.
Cover line:
The Novelist’s Survival Kit (from Writer’s Digest)
Mad Libs style fill-in-the-blanks template:
The _____ Survival Kit
Twist to fit your niche:
The Weight Loss Survival Kit
The Product Launch Survival Kit
The New Mom Survival Kit
The Solopreneur’s Survival Kit
Cover line:
Story Essentials: What Every Writer Should Know (from Writer’s Digest)
Mad Libs style fill-in-the-blanks template:
_____ Essentials: What Every _____ Should Know
Twist to fit your niche:
Weight Loss Essentials: What Every Woman Should Know
Product Launch Essentials: What Every Entrepreneur Should Know
Breastfeeding Essentials: What Every New Mom Should Know
Outsourcing Essentials: What Every Solopreneur Should Know
Easy, right?
Now, let’s see what you can do. Post a comment with your twist on one of the cover lines above (or an alternative cover line from one of the magazines you have on hand). I’d love to see what you come up with!
p.s. This is a great thing to do while you are waiting for doctor’s appointments, oil changes, etc. There are always magazines on hand and often they are ones you’ve never seen before. Fresh inspiration for your brain.